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Industrial  conspiracies 


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The  earth  is  moving,  the  universe  is  working,  all  the 
laws  of  creation  are  working  toward  justice,  toward 
a  better  humanity,  toward  a  higher  ideal,  toward 
a  time  when  men  will  be  brothers  the  world  over. 


Industrial 
Conspiracies 


By  CLARENCE  S.  DARROW 

Noted  Lawyer,  Philosopher,  Author  and 

Humanitarian 


lOo 


The  earth  is  moving,  the  universe  is  working,  all  the 
laws  of  creation  are  working  toward  justice,  toward  a 
better  humanity,  toward  a  higher  ideal,  toward  a  time 
when  men  will  be  brothers  the  world  over. 


Industrial 
Conspiracies 

. 

BY  CLARENCE  S.  D ARROW 
Noted  Lawyer,   Philosopher,   Author   and  Humanitarian 

Lecture  delivered  in  Heilig  Theatre,  Portland  Oregon, 
September  10,  3912. 

Stenographically  reported  and  published  by  permission 
of  the  author. 


Published  by  Turner,  Newman  and  Knispel, 
Address  Box  701  Portland,  Ore. 


Single  copies  of  this  lecture  may  be  had  by  sending  10 
cents  to  publishers,  100  copies  $6.00,  $50.00  per  thousand. 

Orders  must  be  accompanied  by  cash  or  money  order. 
Postage  will  be  prepaid. 
Make  checks  payable  to  Otto  Newman,  Publisher. 

Box  701,  Portland,  Oregon. 

ALL  RIGHTS   RESERVED 


Publisher's  Note. — This  address  was  delivered  shortly  after  Mr. 
Darrow's  triumphant  acquittal  on  a  charge  growing  out  of  his  defense 
of  the  McNamaras  at  Los  Angeles,  California.  The  man,  the  subject 
and  the  occasion  makes  it  one  of  the  greatest  speeches  of  our  time. 
It  is  the  hope  of  the  publishers  that  this  message  of  Mr.  Darrow's 
may  reach  the  millions  of  men,  women  and  youth  of  our  country,  that 
they  may  see  the  labor  problem  plainer  and  that  they  may  receive 
hope  and  inspiration  in  their  efforts  to  make  a  better  and  juster  world. 

PAUL  TURNER, 
OTTO  NEWMAN. 
JULIUS  KNISPEL. 


Copyright,  October  3,  1912,  by  Turner,  Newman  &  Knispel. 


Industrial  Conspiracies 


By   CLARENCE  S.  DARROW 


Mr.  Darrow  said : 

I  feel  very  grateful  to  you  for  the  warmth  and  earnestness 
of  your  reception.  It  makes  me  feel  sure  that  I  am  amongst 
friends.  If  I  had  to  be  tried  again,  I  would  not  mind  taking  a 
change  of  venue  to  Portland  (applause) ;  although  I  think  I 
can  get  along  where  I  am  without  much  difficulty. 

The  subject  for  tonight's  talk  was  not  chosen  by  me  but 
was  chosen  for  me.  I  don't  know  who  chose  it,  nor  just  what 
they  expected  me  to  say,  but  there  is  not  much  in  a  name,  and 
I  suppose  what  I  say  tonight  would  be  just  about  the  same 
under  any  title  that  anybody  saw  fit  to  give. 

I  am  told  that  I  am  going  to  talk  about  "Industrial  Con- 
spiracies." I  ought  to  know  something  about  them.  And  I 
wont  tell  you  all  I  know  tonight,  but  I  will  tell  you  some  things 
that  I  know  tonight. 

The  conspiracy  laws,  you  know,  are  very  old.  As  one  promi- 
nent laboring  man  said  on  the  witness  stand  down  in  Los 
Angeles  a  few  weeks  ago  when  they  asked  him  if  he  was  not 
under  indictment  and  what  for,  he  said  he  was  under  indict- 
ment for  the  charge  they  always  made  against  working  men 
when  they  hadn't  done  anything — conspiracy  And  that  is  the 
charge  they  alays  make.  It  is  the  one  they  have  always  made 


against  everybody  when  they  wanted  them,  and  particularly 
against  working  men,  because  they  want  them  oftener  than 
they  do  anybody  else.  (Applause). 

When  they  want  a  working  man  for  anything  excepting 
work  they  want  him  for  conspiracy.  (Laughter).  And  the 
greatest  conspiracy  that  is  possible  for  a  working  man  to  be 
guilty  of  is  not  to  work — a  conspiracy  the  other  fellows  are 
always  guilty  of.  (Applause).  The  conspiracy  laws  are  very 
old.  They  were  very  much  in  favor  in  the  Star  Chamber  days 
in  England.  If  any  king  or  ruler  wanted  to  get  rid  of  someone, 
and  that  someone  had  not  done  anything,  they  indicted  him 
for  what  he  was  thinking  about;  that  is,  for  conspiracy;  and 
under  it  they  could  prove  anything  that  he  ever  said  or  did, 
and  anything  that  anybody  else  ever  said  or  did  to  prove  what 
he  was  thinking  about;  and  therefore  that  he  was  guilty.  And, 
of  course,  if  anybody  was  thinking,  it  was  a  conspiracy  against 
the  king;  for  you  can't  think  without  thinking  against  a  king. 
(Applause).  The  trouble  is  most  people  don't  think.  (Lanki- 
er and  appause).  And  therefore  they  are  not  guity  of  con- 
spiracy. (Laughter  and  appause). 

The  conspiracy  laws  in  England  were  especialy  used 
against  working  men,  and  in  the  early  days,  not  much  more 
than  a  hundred  years  ago,  for  one  working  man  to  go  to  an- 
other and  suggest  that  he  ask  for  higher  wages  was  a  con- 
spiracy,  punishable  by  imprisonment.  For  a  few  men  to  come 
together  and  form  a  labor  organization  in  England  was  a  con- 
spiracy. It  is  not  here.  Even  the  employer  is  willing  to  let  you 
form  labor  organizations,  if  you  don't  do  anything  but  pass 
resolutions.  (Laughter  and  applause). 

But  the  formation  of  unions  in  the  early  days  in  England 
was  a  conspiracy,  and  so  they  used  to  meet  in  the  forests  and 
in  the  rocks  and  in  the  caves  and  waste  places  and  hide  their 
records  in  the  earth  where  the  informers  and  detectives  and 
Burnes'  men  of  those  days  could  not  get  hold  of  them.  CAp- 


plause).  It  used  to  be  a  crime  for  a  working  man  to  leave  the 
county  without  the  consent  of  the  employer;  and  they  never 
gave  their  consent.  They  were  bought  and  sold  with  the  land. 
Some  of  them  are  now.  It  reached  that  pass  in  England  after 
labor  unions  were  formed,  that  anything  they  did  was  a  con- 
spiracy, and  to  belong  to  one  was  practically  a  criminal  offense. 
These  laws  were  not  made  by  Parliament ;  of  course  they  were 
not  made  by  the  people.  No  law  was  ever  made  by  the  people ; 
they  are  made  for  the  people  (applause)  ;  and  it  does  not  mat- 
ter whether  the  people  have  a  right  to  vote  or  not,  they  never 
make  the  laws.  (Applause). 

These  laws,  however,  were  made  by  judges,  the  same  of- 
ficials who  make  the  laws  in  the  United  States  today.  (Ap- 
plause). 

We  send  men  to  the  Legislature  to  make  law,  but  they 
don't  make  them. 

I  don't  care  who  makes  a  law,  if  you  will  let  me  interpret  it. 
(Laughter).  I  would  be  willing  to  let  the  Steel  Trust  make  a 
law  if  they  would  let  me  tell  what  it  meant  after  they  got  it 
made.  (Laughter).  That  has  been  the  job  of  the  judges,  and 
that  is  the  reason  the  powerful  interests  of  the  world  always 
want  the  courts.  They  let  you  have  the  members  of  the  Legis- 
lature, and  the  Aldermen  and  the  Constable,  if  hey  can  have 
the  judges. 

And  so  in  England  the  judges  by  their  decisions  tied  the 
working  man  hand  and  foot  until  he  was  a  criminal  if  he  did 
anything  but  work,  as  many  people  think  he  is  today.  He 
actually  was  at  that  time,  until  finally  Parliament,  through  the 
revolution  of  the  people,  repealed  all  these  laws  that  judges  had 
made,  wiped  them  all  out  of  existence,  and  did,  for  a  time  at 
least,  leave  the  working  man  free;  and  then  they  began  to 
organize,  and  it  has  gone  on  to  that  extent  in  England  today, 
that  labor  organizations  are  as  firmly  established  as  Parliament 
itself.  Much  better  established  there  than  here. 


We  in  this  country  got  our  early  laws  from  England.  We 
took  pretty  much  everything  that  was  bad  from  England  and 
left  most  that  was  good.  (Applause).  At  first,  when  labor 
organizations  were  started  they  had  a  fair  chance;  they  were 
loft  comparatively  free;  but  when  they  began  to  grow  the 
American  judges  got  busy.  They  got  busy  with  injunctions, 
with  conspiracy  laws,  and  there  was  scarcely  anything  that  a 
labor  organization  could  do  that  was  not  an  industrial  con- 
spiracy. 

Congress  took  a  hand,  not  against  labor;  but  to  illustrate 
what  I  said  about  the  difference  between  making  a  law  and 
telling  what  the  law  means,  we  might  refer  to  the  act  which 
was  considered  a  great  law  at  the  time  of  its  passage,  a  law 
defining  conspiracy  and  combinations  in  reference  to  trade,  the 
Sherman  anti-trust  law.  In  the  meantime,  the  combinations  of 
capital  had  grown  so  large  that  even  respectable  people  began 
to  be  afraid  of  them,  farmers  and  other  who  never  learn  any- 
thing until  everybody  else  has  forgotten  it  (laughter)  ;  they  be- 
gan to  be  afraid  of  them.  They  found  the  great  industrial  organi- 
zations of  the  country  controlling  everything  they  used.  One 
powerful  organization  owned  all  the  oil  there  was  in  the  United 
States;  another  handful  of  men  owned  all  the  anthracite  coal 
there  was  in  the  United  States;  a  few  men  owned  all  the  iron 
mines  in  the  United  States ;  and  the  people  began  to  be  alarmed 
about  it.  And  so  they  passed  a  law  punishing  conspiracies 
against  trade.  The  father  of  the  law  was  Senator  Sherman  of 
Ohio.  The  law  was  debated  long  in  Congress  and  the  Senate. 
Every  man  spoke  of  it  as  a  law  against  the  trusts  and  monop- 
olies, conspiracies  in  restraint  of  trade  and  commerce.  Every 
newspaper  in  the  country  discussed  it  as  that;  every  labor 
organization  so  considered  it. 

Congress  passed  it  and  the  President  signed  it,  and  then  an 
indictment  was  found  against  a  corporation,  and  it  went  to  the 
Supreme  Court  of  the  United  States  for  the  Supreme  Court  to 

6 


say  what  the  law  meant.  Of  course  Congress  can't  pass  a  law 
that  you  and  I  can  understand.  (Laughter).  They  may  use 
words  that  are  only  found  in  the  primer,  but  we  don't  know 
what  they  mean.  Nobody  but  the  Supreme  Court  can  tell  what 
they  mean. 

Everybody  supposed  this  law  was  plain  and  simple  and 
easily  understood,  but  when  they  indicted  a  combination  of 
capital  for  a  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade,  the  Supreme  Court 
said  this  law  did  not  apply  to  them  at  all;  that  it  was  never 
meant  to  fit  that  particular  case.  So  they  tried  another  one, 
and  they  indicted  another  combination  engaged  in  the  business 
of  cornering  markets,  engaged  in  the  business  of  trade,  rich 
people,  good  people.  It  means  the  same  thing.  (Laughter). 
And  the  Supreme  Court  decided  that  this  law  did  not  fit  their 
case,  and  every  one  began  to  wonder  what  the  law  did  mean 
anyhow.  And  after  awhile  there  came  along  the  strike  of  a 
body  of  laboring  men,  the  American  Railway  Union.  They 
didn't  have  a  dollar  in  the  world  altogether,  because  they 
were  laboring  men  and  they  were  not  engaged  in  trade;  they 
were  working;  but  they  hadn't  found  anything  else  that  the 
Sherman  anti-trust  act  applied  to,  so  they  indicted  Debs  and 
his  followers  for  a  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade;  and  they 
carried  this  case  to  the  Supreme  Court.  I  was  one  of  the  attor- 
neys who  carried  it  to  the  Supreme  Court,  Most  lawyers  only 
tell  you  about  the  cases  they  win.  I  can  tell  you  about  some  I 
lose.  (Applause).  A  lawyer  who  wins  all  his  cases  does  not 
have  many.  (Laughter). 

Debs  was  indicted  for  a  conspiracy  in  restraint  of  trade. 
It  is  not  quite  fair  to  say  that  I  lost  that  case,  because  he  was 
indicted  and  fearing  he  might  get  out  on  the  indictment  the 
judge  issued  an  injunction  against  him.  (Laughter).  The  facts 
were  the  same  as  if  a  man  were  suspected  of  killing  somebody 
and  a  judge  would  issue  an  injunction  against  him  for  shoot- 
ing his  neighbor  and  he  would  kill  his  neighbor  with  a  pistol 


shot  and  then  they  would  send  him  to  jail  for  injuring  his 
clothes  for  violating  an  injunction.  (Laughter).  Well,  they 
indicted  him  and  they  issued  an  injunction  against  him  for  the 
same  thing.  Of  course,  we  tried  the  indictment  before  a  jury, 
and  that  we  won.  You  can  generally  trust  a  part  of  a  jury  any- 
how, and  very  often  all  of  them.  But  the  court  passed  on  the 
injunction  case,  and  while  the  facts  were  just  the  same  and  the 
law  was  just  the  same,  the  jury  found  him  innocent,  but  the 
court  found  him  guilty.  (Laughter).  And  Judge  Wood  said 
that  he  had  violated  the  injunction.  Then  we  carried  it  to  the 
Supreme  Court  on  the  ground  that  the  Sherman  anti-trust 
law,  which  was  a  law  to  punish  conspiracies  in  restraint  of 
trade,  was  not  meant  for  labor  unions  but  it  was  meant  for 
people  who  are  trading,  just  as  an  ordinary  common  man  would 
understand  the  meaning  of  language,  but  the  Supreme  Court 
said  we  didn't  know  anything  about  the  meaning  of  language 
and  that  they  had  at  last  found  what  the  Sherman  anti-trust 
law  meant  and  that  it  was  to  break  up  labor  unions;  and  they 
sent  Mr.  Debs  to  jail  under  that  law  (laughter  and  applause), 
and  nobody,  excepting  someone  connected  with  the  union  had 
ever  been  sent  to  jail  under  that  law,  and  probably  never 
will  be. 

So  of  course,  even  the  employer,  the  Merchants'  and  Manu- 
facturers' Association  and  the  Steel  Trust,  even  they  would 
be  willing  to  let  the  Socialists  go  to  the  Legislature  and  make 
the  laws,  as  long  as  they  can  get  the  judges  to  tell  what  the 
law  means.  (Loud  applause).  For  the  courts  are  the  bulwarks 
of  property,  property  rights  and  property  interests,  and  they 
always  have  been.  I  don't  know  whether  they  always  will 
be.  I  suppose  they  will  always  be,  because  before  a  man  can 
be  elected  a  judge  he  must  be  a  lawyer. 

They  did  patch  up  the  laws  against  combinations  in  re- 
straint of  trade.  Even  the  fellows  who  interpreted  it,  were 
ashamed  of  it  and  they  fixed  it  up  so  they  might  catch  some- 

8 


body  else,  and  they  brought  a  case  against  the  Tobacco  Trust, 
and  after  long  argument  and  years  of  delay  the  Supreme  Court 
decided  on  the  Tobacco  Trust  and  they  decided  that  this  was  a 
combination  in  restraint  of  trade,  but  they  didn't  send  anybody 
to  jail.  They  didn't  even  fine  them.  They  gave  them  six 
months — not  in  jail,  but  six  months  in  which  to  remodel  their 
business  so  it  would  conform  to  the  law,  which  they  did.  (Ap- 
plause and  laughter).  But  plug  tobacco  is  selling  just  as  high 
as  it  ever  was,  and  higher. 

They  brought  an  action  against  the  Standard  Oil  Trust- 
Mr.  Koosevelt's  enemy.      (Laughter  and  applause).     That  is 
what  he  says.     (Laughter  and  applause).     They  brought  an 
action  against  the  Standard  Oil  Trust  to  dissolve  the  Trust 
and  they  listened  patiently  for  a  few  years — the  Supreme  Court 
is  made  up  of  old  men,  and  they  have  got  lots  of  time  (laugh- 
ter)— and  after  a  few  years  they  found  out  what  the  people 
had  known  for  twenty -five  years,  that  it  was  a  trust,  and  they 
so  decided  that  this  great  corporation  had  been  a  conspiracy 
in  restraint  of  trade  for  years,  had  been  fleecing  the  American 
people.  I  don't  suppose  anybody  would  have  brought  an  action 
against  them,  excepting  that  they  had  a  corner  on  gasoline 
and  the  rich  people  didn't  like  to  pay  so  much  for  gasoline  to 
run  their  automobiles.     (Laughter  and  applause).    They  found 
out  that  the  Standard  Oil  Company  was  guilty  of  a  conspiracy 
under  the  Sherman  anti-trust  law,   and  they  gave  them  six 
months  in  which  to  change  the  form  of  their  business,  and 
Standard  Oil  stock  today  is  worth  more  than  it  ever  was  be- 
fore in  the  history  of  the  world,  and  gasoline  has  not  been  re- 
duced in  price,  nor  anything  else  that  they  have  to  sell.    There 
never  has  been  an  instance  since  that  law  was  passed  where  it 
has  ever  had  the  slightest  effect  upon  any  combination  of 
capital,  but  under  it  working  men  are  promptly  sent  to  jail; 
and  it  was  passed  to  protect  the  working  man  and  the  consumer 
against  the  trusts  of  the  United  States.    So,  you  see,  it  does  not 


make  much  difference  what  kind  of  a  law  we  make  as  long  as 
the  judges  tell  us  what  it  means. 

The  Steel  Trust  has  not  been  hurt.  They  are  allowed  to  go 
their  way,  and  they  have  taken  property,  which  at  the  most, 
is  worth  three  hundred  million  dollars  and  have  capitalized  it 
and  bonded  it  for  a  billion  and  a  half,  or  five  dolars  for  every 
one  that  it  represents,  and  the  interests  and  dividends  which 
have  been  promptly  paid  year  by  year  have  come  from  the 
toil  and  the  sweat  and  the  life  of  the  American  workingman. 
(Applause).  And  nobody  interferes  with  the  Steel  Trust;  at 
least,  nobody  but  the  direct  action  men.  (Laughter  and  ap- 
plause). The  courts  are  silent,  the  states'  attorneys  are  silent; 
the  governors  are  silent;  all  the  officers  of  the  law  are  silent, 
while  a  great  monster  combination  of  crooks  and  criminals 
are  riding  rough-shod  over  the  American  people.  (Ap- 
plause). But  it  is  the  working  man  who  is  guilty  of  the  indus- 
trial conspiracy.  They  and  their  friends  are  the  ones  who  are 
sent  to  jail.  It  is  the  powerful  and  the  strong  who  have  the 
keys  to  the  jails  and  the  penitentiaries,  and  there  is  not  much 
danger  of  their  locking  themselves  in  jails  and  penitentaries. 
The  working  man  never  did  have  the  keys.  Their  business  has 
been  to  build  them  and  to  fill  them. 

There  have  been  other  industrial  conspiracies,  however, 
which  are  the  ones  that  interest  me  most,  and  it  is  about  these 
and  what  you  can  do  about  them  and  what  you  can't  do  about 
them  that  I  wish  to  talk  tonight. 

The  real  industrial  conspiracies  are  by  the  other  fellow.  It 
is  strange  that  the  people  who  have  no  property  have  been 
guilty  of  all  of  the  industrial  conspiracies,  and  the  people  who 
own  all  the  earth  have  not  been  guilty  of  any  industrial  con- 
spiracy. It  is  like  our  criminal  law.  Nearly  all  the  laws  are 
made  to  protect  property;  nearly  all  the  crimes  are  crimes 
against  property,  and  yet  only  the  poor  go  to  jail.  That  is,  all 
the  people  in  our  jail  have  committed  crimes  against  property, 

10 


and  yet  they  have  not  got  a  cent.  The  people  outside  have  so 
much  property  they  don't  know  what  to  do  with  it,  and  they 
have  committed  no  crime  against  property.  So  with  the  in- 
dustrial conspiracies,  those  who  are  not  in  trade  or  commerce 
are  the  ones  who  have  been  guilty  of  a  conspiracy  to  restrict 
trade  and  commerce,  and  those  who  are  in  trade  and  commerce 
that  have  all  the  money  have  not  been  guilty  of  anything. 
Their  business  is  prosecuting  other  people  so  they  can  keep 
what  they  have  got  and  get  what  little  there  is  left. 

But  there  are  real  industrial  conspiracies.  They  began  long 
ages  ago,  and  they  began  by  direct  action,  when  the  first  capi- 
talist took  his  club  and  knocked  the  brains  out  of  somebody 
who  wanted  a  part  of  it  for  himself.  That  is  direct  action. 
They  got  the  land  by  direct  action.  They  went  out  and  took 
it.  If  anybody  was  there,  they  drove  them  off  or  killed  them, 
as  the  case  might  be.  It  is  only  the  other  fellow  that  can't 
have  direct  action.  They  got  all  their  title  to  the  earth  by 
direct  action.  Of  course,  they  have  swapped  it  more  or  less, 
since,  but  the  origin  is  there.  They  just  went  out  and  took 
possession  of  it,  and  it  is  theirs.  And  the  strong  have  always 
done  it ;  they  have  reached  out  and  taken  possession  of  the 
earth. 

A  few  men.  today  can  control  all  the  industry  and  do  control 
all  of  the  industry  of  this  country.  A  dozen  men  sitting  around 
the  table  in  a  big  city  can  bring  famine  if  they  wish ;  they  can 
paralyze  the  wheels  of  industry  from  one  end  of  the  United 
States  to  the  other,  and  the  prosperity  of  villages,  cities  and 
towns,  and  the  wages  of  its  people  depends  almost  entirely 
upon  the  wills  of  a  dozen  men. 

They  have  taken  the  mines ;  and  all  the  coal  there  is  in  the 
United  States,  or  practically  all,  is  controlled  today  by  a  few 
rairoad  companies  who  can  tell  us  just  what  we  must  pay,  and 
if  we  are  not  willing  to  pay  it,  we  can  freeze ;  and  we  respect 
private  property  so  much  that  we  will  stand  around  and  freeze 

II 


rather  than  take  the  coal  that  nature  placed  in  the  earth  for 
all  mankind.  (Applause). 

All  the  iron  ore  in  the  United  States  that  is  worth  taking  is 
owned  and  controlled  by  the  Steel  Trust,  one  combination  with 
a  very  few  men  managing  the  business ;  not  more  than  a  half  a 
dozen  absolutely  controlling  it  have  their  will ;  and  nobody  can 
have  any  iron  ore,  or  mold  it  or  use  it,  excepting  at  the  will  of 
a  few  men  who  have  taken  possession  of  what  nature  placed 
there  for  all  of  us,  if  we  were  wise  enough  to  use  it  and  under- 
stand it.  And  the  great  forests  of  the  United  States,  what  is 
left  of  them — and  there  is  not  so  very  much  left.  We  are  a 
wise  people.  We  pass  laws  now  for  the  protection  of  timber  in 
the  United  States,  so  it  won't  be  destroyed  too  fast,  and  at 
the  same  time,  we  put  a  tariff  duty  of  two  dollars  a  thousand 
on  lumber  that  comes  from  somewhere  else  so  that  it  will  be 
destroyed  at  a  high  price.  (Laughter  and  applause).  We  are 
the  wisest  set  of  people  of  any  land  that  the  sun  ever  shone 
upon.  And  if  you  don't  believe  it,  ask  Koosevelt  when  he 
comes  here.  (Laughter  and  applause). 

A  few  men  control  what  is  left  of  the  forests,  a  few  men 
and  a  few  great  corporations  have  taken  the  earth,  what  is 
good  of  it.  They  have  left  the  arid  lands,  the  desert  and  the 
mountains  which  nobody  can  use, — the  desert  for  sand  heaps 
and  the  mountains  for  scenery.  They  are  now  taxing  the 
people  to  build  reservoirs  so  that  the  desert  will  blossom;  and 
after  it  begins  to  blossom,  they  will  take  that.  (Applause). 
And  even  if  they  didn't  own  the  land,  they  own  all  the  ways 
there  are  of  getting  to  it,  and  they  are  able  to  take  from  the 
farmer  just  so  much  of  his  grain  as  they  see  fit  to  take,  and  so 
far  as  the  farmer  is  concerned,  I  wish  they  would  take  it  all 
(laughter  and  applause),  because  he  always  has  been  against 
the  interests  of  every  man  that  toils,  including  himself.  (Ap- 
plause). And  they  are  able  to  say  to  the  working  man  engaged 
in  industry  just  how  much  of  his  product  they  will  take,  and 

12 


from  him  they  take  just  enough  to  leave  him  alive.  They  have 
got  to  leave  him  alive,  or  he  can't  work,  and  they  have  got  to 
leave  him  enough  strength  and  ambition  to  propagate  his 
species  or  the  rich  people  can't  get  their  work  done  in  the  next 
generation.  And  that  is  all  that  they  are  bound  to  leave  him. 

They  own  the  railroads,  the  mills,  the  factories,  and  all  the 
tools  and  implements  of  trade  and  commerce,  and  the  work- 
ingman  has  ony  one  thing  to  sell.  That  is  his  labor,  his  life ; 
and  he  has  to  sell  that  to  the  highest  bidder. 

There  are  only  a  few  of  these  men  who  own  the  earth  and 
all  of  its  fullness.  There  are  millions  and  millions  of  the  people 
who  do  the  work,  and  if  you  can  keep  these  millions  and  mil- 
lions disorganized  and  competing  with  each  other,  they  will 
keep  wages  down  themselves  without  any  help  from  the  bosses. 
(Laud  applause).  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  so  few  men 
who  own  the  earth  and  the  tools  that  they  find  it  perfectly  easy 
to  combine  with  each  other  and  regulate  the  price  of  their 
products,  and  they  have  learned  better  than  to  compete,  and 
there  is  no  way  for  the  wit  of  man  to  make  and  interpret  any 
law  which  will  ever  set  them  to  competing  again.  They  have 
managed  to  control  the  price  of  their  products,  and  charge 
what  they  see  fit  and  all  they  need  is  to  buy  their  raw  material 
in  the  open  markets  of  the  world  as  cheaply  as  they  can,  and 
labor  is  the  principal  raw  material  that  they  use.  So  of  course 
they  want  free  trade  in  labor,  and  protection  in  commodities; 
and  they  have  always  had  it,  and  our  wise  Americans  that  are 
the  marvel  of  the  day,  including  the  working  people,  have 
cheerfully  given  them  protection  in  the  commodities  that  they 
sell  and  free  trade  in  the  labor  which  they  buy.  (Applause). 
And  they  thought  by  protecting  the  Steel  ^Trust,  so  there  can't 
be  any  foreign  competition  that  it  will  make  the  Steel  Trust 
so  rich  that  they  can  afford  to  pay  high  prices  to  their  work- 
ing men.  It  is  one  thing  to  make  a  man  rich  enough  so  he  can 


afford  to  pay  high  wages ;  it  is  another  thing  to  make  him  pay. 
(Laughter). 

So  the  employer  and  the  capitalist  have  combined  in  all  in- 
dustry, and  they  fix  the  price  to  suit  themselves  and  insist 
that  the  workingman  shall  come  to  them  individually  and 
unorganized  and  compete  with  each  other  for  a  day's  labor, 
so  they  can  buy  labor  at  the  smallest  cost  and  if,  perchance, 
there  are  not  working  men  enough  here,  they  want  the  ports 
of  the  world  opened  so  they  can  draw  on  China  or  Japan  or 
any  other  country  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  and  get  working 
men  there  to  work  for  them  at  the  smallest  price. 

The  game  is  simple  and  easy.  It  seems  as  if  it  were  simple 
enough  for  an  American  farmer  to  understand;  but  he  doesn't. 
(Laughter). 

Now,  the  original  conspiracy,  industrial  conspiracy,  has 
been  on  the  part  of  the  strong  to  take  the  earth,  and  they  have 
got  it.  They  own  it,  and  all  they  need  now  is  to  get  enough 
working  men  and  women  at  a  low  enough  price  to  make  them 
as  much  wealth  as  they  want.  It  is  pretty  hard  to  fill  that 
market,  they  want  so  much ;  but  that  is  all  they  need.  And  the 
conspiracy  on  the  other  side  of  the  workingman  of  the  United 
States  is  the  same  conspiracy  as  the  conspiracy  of  the  work- 
ingman of  the  world,  and  it  has  only  one  object.  "We  may 
temporize;  we  may  be  content  with  a  little;  we  may  stop  at 
half  measures,  but  in  the  end  it  only  has  one  object,  and  that  is 
for  the  workers  of  the  world  to  take  back  the  earth  that  has 
been  taken  from  us.  (Cries  of  hurrah  and  loud  cheering). 

Take  it  back,  and  have  all  the  products  of  their  toil,  not 
part  of  it,  but  all  of  it.  Now,  it  is  a  long  road.  It  is  a  univer- 
sal, world-wide  conspiracy  by  the  intelligent  working  people 
and  by  their  friends  the  world  over  to  get  back  the  earth  that 
has  been  stolen  by  direct  action.  (Applause). 

Now,  no  one  who  understands  this  question  wants  anything 
less  and  the  employer  is  right  when  he  says  if  workingmen  are 

14 


permitted  to  organize  they  won't  stop  with  that;  and  they 
won't.  (Applause).  You  may  place  every  lawyer  on  the  bench 
and  you  may  place  a  jail  in  every  block  and  a  penitentiary  in 
every  ward,  and  the  workingmen  won't  stop.  (Applause). 
If  they  will,  they  deserve  to  be  workingmen  forever.  Applause). 

The  employer  understands  that  if  workingmen  organize 
something  will  be  doing ;  and  so  he  does  not  believe  in  organi- 
zation. Sometimes  he  says  he  does,  but  he  does  not.  If  work- 
ingmen must  organize,  then  the  thing  is  to  keep  them  as  quiet 
as  they  can,  to  turn  their  labor  meetings  into  prayer  meetings. 
(Laughter  and  applause).  They  are  entirely  harmless.  They 
don't  help  the  people  who  pray,  and  the  Lord  has  always  been 
so  far  away  from  the  workingman  that  it  doesn't  bother  Him 
either.  (Laughter).  They  are  willing  even,  as  I  have  said, 
to  let  them  pass  resolutions,  but  that  is  about  the  limit. 
(Laughter).  They  understand  that  one  thing  leads  to  another, 
and  if  they  concede  higher  wages  today,  next  year  they  will 
want  another  raise  and  so  they  will.  There  is  no  danger  of 
raising  it  too  high  for  a  long  while  to  come.  And  if  they  con- 
cede shorter  hours  today,  next  year  they  may  want  them 
shorter  still.  Everybody  is  working  for  shorter  hours,  especial- 
ly the  people  who  don't  work.  And  they  are  all  working  for 
bigger  pay;  even  those  who  get  all  there  is,  they  want  more. 
And  of  course,  there  will  be  no  stopping,  there  will  be  no  end 
to  the  demand,  until  we  get  it  all,  and  that  is  a  long  way  off. 

And  the  question  is  how?  And  that  is  not  so  easy.  It  is 
easier  to  tell  how  you  can't  get  it  than  to  tell  how  you  can 
get  it.  It  is  easier  to  tell  how  you  haven't  got  it  than  how  you 
are  going  to  get  it. 

There  is  another  thing  that  they  are  fairly  well  satisfied 
with:  They  don't  worry  much  about  voting.  They  have 
been  satisfied  to  let  all  the  men  vote,  and  they  have  still  kept 
their  property.  (Laughter).  They  will  be  satisfied  to  let  all 
the  women  vote,  and  they  will  still  keep  their  property.  Voting 

15 


has  not  done  very  much.  We  have  been  practicing  at  it  for 
more  than  a  hundred  years,  and  it  is  a  nice  little  toy  to  keep 
people  satisfied,  but  that  is  all  it  has  done  so  far.  (Applause). 
Of  course,  here  and  there  we  have  been  able  to  pass  a  few 
laws.  For  instance,  we  have  statutes  which  forbid  women 
from  working  in  a  factory  more  than  ten  hours  a  day.  (Laugh- 
ter). Now,  we  have  done  something.  (Laughter  and  applause). 
We  have  statutes  forbidding  men  to  labor  more  than  a  certain 
number  of  hours  a  day.  That  is,  people  like  to  work;  they  love 
it  so  dearly  that  you  have  to  pass  a  law  to  keep  a  working  man 
from  working.  (Laughter). 

When  we  pass  laws  to  keep  men  and  women  from  work i ML: 
it  ought  to  show  the  stupidest  mind  that  there  is  something 
terribly  wrong  with  the  industrial  conditions  under  which  we 
live.  If  men  had  a  chance  to  work  and  get  all  the  proceeds 
of  their  work,  you  would  not  have  to  pass  laws  to  keep  them 
from  working.  They  would  stop  soon  enough.  And  if  every 
man  could  employ  his  own  labor  and  receive  the  full  product 
of  his  toil  it  would  make  no  difference  how  hard  you  neighbor 
worked,  it  would  not  hurt  you  in  the  least,  and  you  could  let 
him  work  himself  to  death  if  he  wanted  to. 

The  only  difficulty  is  under  the  patch  work  industrial  sys- 
tem of  today  where  a  few  men  own  all  the  earth,  and  all  the 
factories  and  mills  and  are  compelled  to  sell  their  product  to 
the  workingman,  they  give  him  such  a  small  share  of  that 
product  that  the  workingmen  haven't  anything  to  buy  it  with. 
They  can't  buy  it  back,  and  so  there  is  not  work  enough  to  go 
around.  And  for  that  reason  we  are  tinkering  up  this  old 
system  of  laws  to  keep  people  from  working,  and  we  pass  a 
law  to  limit  the  number  of  hours  that  a  man  can  work  and  to 
limit  the  number  of  hours  that  a  woman  can  work,  and  to  limit 
the  age  at  which  a  little  child  can  be  fed  into  a  factory  or  a 
mill. 

Do  you  suppose  that  the  fatherhood  and  the  motherhood  of 

16 


the  people  of  the  United  States  is  not  of  a  high  enough  grade 
so  they  would  not  send  their  children  to  a  factory  or  a  mill  if 
there  was  any  way  to  avoid  it?  And  do  you  think  under 
any  fair  system  of  industry  and  life  we  would  ever  need  a  law 
to  keep  a  child  out  of  a  factory  or  a  mill?  (Applause). 

We  have  managed  to  pass  some  laws  to  require  safety  ap- 
pliances in  factories  and  in  mills  and  upon  railroads.  For  in- 
stance, to  put  a  guard  on  a  buzz  saw  so  that  a  workingman  won 't 
saw  his  hand  instead  of  sawing  the  wood.  (Laughter).  But 
if  a  workingman  had  any  chance  to  employ  his  labor  and  get 
Avhat  he  produced  he  would  not  be  fooling  with  a  buzz  saw  and 
there  would  be  no  need  of  it  and  he  would  look  out  for  the 
safety  of  the  machines  himself  and  do  it  a  great  deal  better 
than  the  Government  ever  did  it  or  can  ever  possibly  do  it. 
(Applause).  So  we  have  done  everything  and  tried  everything, 
excepting  to  strike  at  the  root  of  any  evil  and  accomplish 
something  of  real  value.  We  have  even  passed  laws  excluding 
the  Chinaman  and  the  Jap  from  the  United  States.  That  is, 
we  love  our  own  people  so  dearly  that  we  won't  let  the  China- 
man or  the  Jap  do  the  work  for  them.  (Laughter).  We  want 
our  people  to  have  all  the  work,  and  if  they  come  here  and 
volunteer  to  do  it  we  won't  let  them;  for  work  is  a  blessing 
under  the  present  industrial  system.  We  have  to  work.  If 
we  stop  we  starve. 

Now,  I  could  imagine  a  system,  and  it  seems  to  me  that 
most  all  of  you  could  imagine  a  system  that  was  so  fair  and  so 
just  and  so  equal  that  if  any  body  df  philanthropic  heathens 
would  agree  to  come  over  here  and  do  our  work  for  us,  we 
would  go  and  play  golf  or  run  automobiles  whilst  they  were 
doing  it ;  but  with  a  condition  of  life  where  a  few  men  have  it 
all  and  the  rest  can  only  live  if  they  have  the  work  to  do,  why 
no  one  can  do  it  for  us;  we  have  got  to  do  it  ourselves.  We 
can't  even  allow  a  machine  to  do  it,  for  every  time  we  get  the 
machine  to  do  the  work  it  takes  the  place  of  a  man  or  two,  or 

17 


more,  and  they  go  out  to  beg  or  tramp  or  starve,  as  the  case 
may  be. 

"We  have  got  a  wonderful  system  of  industry,  and  industrial 
life.  If  anybody  ever  invented  it,  which  they  didn't,  he  must 
have  been  standing  on  his  head  and  drunken  at  the  time  he  did 
it.  (Laughter  and  applause). 

And  now  what  are  we  going  to  do  about  it?  We  have  the 
great  mass  of  men  living  upon  the  will  of  a  few  and  taking 
what  they  can  get,  and  we  have  got  to  get  back  the  earth.  A 
small  job.  Some  people  would  say,  "Well,  if  you  have  got  to 
get  it  back  why  don't  you  go  and  take  it?"  Well,  we  don't. 
Some  people  say  we  have  got  to  vote  it  back,  and  some  say  we 
have  got  to  get  it  back  through  labor  organizations,  and  some 
say  we  have  got  to  have  a  good  deal  more  than  that. 

I  don't  know.  But  I  want  to  say  some  things  about  political 
action.  If  we  are  going  to  get  at  it  in  that  way  we  first  had 
better  understand  the  size  of  the  contract,  and  there  are  a 
great  many  people  who  don't.  (Applause). 

We  have  been  voting  a  long  time,  and  we  have  a  democracy. 
Everybody  can  vote — every  man  past  twenty-one.  If  we  are 
not  doing  well  enough  we  are  going  to  let  the  women  vote; 
then  if  we  don't  do  any  better  we  will  let  the  children  vote, 
and  then  we  will  get  somewhere.  (Applause).  If  we  are  going 
to  get  out  of  this  muss  by  voting,  why,  let's  have  a  little  of  it. 
We  had  better  have  an  election  every  day,  because'  if  we  can 
do  it  that  way  it  is  about  the  simplest  there  is.  But  we  have 
been  working  at  it  a  long  while  and  we  are  getting  in  worse 
all  the  time. 

In  the  first  place,  how  many  of  us  understand  our  system 
of  government?  We  hear  people  talk  about  it  on  the  Fourth 
day  of  July,  and  they  run  for  an  office  in  the  fall.  The  most 
glorious  system  ever  invented  by  the  wit  of  man ! 

I  want  to  say  th.it  it  is  about  the  craziest  system  that  was 
ever  conceived  in  the  brain  of  man.  (Applause). 

18 


Our  system  of  government  never  was  conceived  in  the  brain 
of  man,  because  no  man  or  combination  of  men  were  ever 
foolish  enough  and  weak  enough  to  conceive  them.  It  is  a 
system  of  blunders.  If  you  would  elect  for  the  next  hundred 
years  a  president  as  wise  as  Roosevelt  (laughter  and  applause) 
you  could  not  move  a  peg. 

Let  me  just  tell  yon  why.  Suppose  we  want  to  pass  a  law. 
As  I  have  said,  we  pass  little  fool  laws  and  nobody  pays  much 
attention  to  them.  They  don't  hurt  anybody  and  they  let  them 
go.  But  suppose  we  want  to  pass  a  law  of  substance,  if  there 
is  any  such  thing  as  a  law  of  substance;  suppose  we  want  to 
do  it,  something  affecting  fundamental  rights,  now  how  are  we 
going  to  get  at  it  ? 

One  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  ago  and  more  a  body 
of  men,  very  wise  for  their  day  and  generation,  met  to  form 
the  constitution.  They  had  just  been  indulging  in  a  little 
direct  action  against  England.  (Laughter).  They  could  have 
sent  members  to  Parliament  up  to  now  and  we  would  have  still 
been  British  subjects.  I  don't  know  as  we  would  have  been 
any  worse  off  if  we  had  been.  But  they  got  at  it  simply  and 
directly,  and  so  they  won  our  American  independence.  I  don't 
know  just  when  it  was  lost,  but  they  won  it.  (Applause).  And 
the  first  thing  they  did  was  to  have  a  constitution. 

You  can'  do  anything  without  a  constitution.  You  have  got 
to  have  a  good  constitution  to  get  anywhere. 

And  so  they  got  together  a  body  of  men,  John  Hancock  and 
some  more  penmen,  and  they  wrote  a  constitution. 

Now,  what  is  a  constitution  ?  Why,  it  is  just  the  same  as  if 
a  boy,  twenty-one  years  of  age,  would  say,  "Well,  now,  I  have 
become  of  age,  and  I  am  wise,  and  I  am  going  to  write  out  a 
constitution  to  cover  the  rest  of  my  life,  and  when  I  am  forty 
I  can't  do  anything  that  is  unconstitutional." 

There  wasn't  a  railroad  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years 
ago;  there  wasn't  a  steam  engine;  there  wasn't  a  flying  ma- 

19 


chine,  of  course,  nor  an  automobile.  Nobody  knew  anything 
about  electricity,  except  what  came  down  from  the  clouds  and 
they  were  busy  dodging  it.  There  were  few  machines;  there 
was  just  a  body  of  farmers — that's  all.  (Laughter  and  ap- 
plause). And  they  wrote  the  constitution,  and  there  it  is.  It 
didn't  apply  to  the  industrial  conditions  of  today,  for  they 
didn't  know  anything  about  the  industrial  conditions  of  today, 
but  they  imagined  that  they  were  so  wise  that  lest  people  one 
hundred  and  twenty-five  years  later  should  think  they  knew 
more  they  would  tie  things  up  so  that  we  could  not  make  a  fool 
of  ourselves,  to  the  third  or  fourth  generation  after  they  were 
dead.  (Laughter).  And  so  they  wrote  down  a  constitution 
which  meant  that  whatever  the  American  people  wanted  to  do 
a  hundred,  or  two  hundred,  or  five  hundred  years  afterward, 
they  could  not  do  it  unless  it  agreed  with  the  constitution  that 
had  already  been  written  down  or  unless  they  changed  it. 

Well  now,  that  was  a  wise  piece  of  business  so  far,  wasn't 
it?  But  that  is  only  the  beginning  of  it. 

Then  they  organized  this  government  into  separate  states. 
I  don't  know  how  many  there  are  now,  they  are  hatching  some 
new  ones  all  the  while.  But  every  state  was  independent  in  a 
way.  and  in  a  way  it  was  united  with  all  the  rest.  Nobody 
knows  just  how  much  independence  there  is  and  how  much 
union  there  is.  Nobody  knows  but  the  judges,  and  they  only 
know  in  the  particular  case.  They  can  say  this  goes  or  this 
does  not  go;  nobody  can  tell  until  they  get  there.  (Laughter). 
What  comes  within  the  state  province  and  what  comes  within 
the  national  province  nobody  knows,  nor  ever  did  know.  The 
states  are  individual  and  separate  to  make  laws  for  them- 
selves. Each  one  of  them  has  a  law  factory  of  their  own,  and 
they  are  all  busy;  and  the  United  States  Government  has  an- 
other big  law  factory,  and  they  have  all  been  grinding  out  laws 
for  a  hundred  years  and  not  only  that  but  the  courts  have 


20 


been  telling  us  what  they  mean  and  what  they  don't  mean;  so 
it  has  been  pretty  busy  for  the  lawyer. 

Then  they  decided  that  they  should  have  a  congress,  which 
consisted  of  the  senate,  where  men  were  selected  for  six  years, 
not  by  the  people  but  by  state  legislatures,  and  a  congress 
where  men  were  elected  for  two  years  by  the  people.  But  these 
congressmen  elected  for  two  yaers  didn't  take  their  seat  for  a 
year  after  they  were  elected,  and  time  to  forget  all  about  the 
issue  on  which  they  were  elected.  (Laughter).  And  not 
satisfied  with  that,  they  had  to  have  a  Supreme  Court  to  tell 
us  what  congress  or  the  senate  meant,  and  the  Supreme  Court 
was  appointed  for  life  and  not  beholden  to  anybody;  and  they 
are  generally  about  a  hundred  years  old  apiece.  (Laughter). 
And  then  they  had  a  president,  who  was  elected  for  four  years, 
and  who  had  a  right  to  veto  anything  that  congress  and  the 
senate  saw  fit  to  pass,  and  if  he  voted  it  you  could  not  pass  it 
except  by  a  two-thirds  majority  of  both  houses.  And  there  you 
have  got  it,  so  far  as  the  United  States  Government  is  con- 
cerned. But  that  is  not  nearly  all. 

So  if  you  want  to  pass  some  important  law,  let's  see  what 
you  have  to  do.  Of  course,  little  laws  don't  count,  for  you 
can't  keep  up  a  factory  unless  you  do  something,  pass  laws 
one  year  and  repeal  them  the  next,  or  some  little  thing  like 
that,  to  save  the  job.  But  take  an  important  thing,  an  issue  com- 
ing up  from  the  people,  one  ultimately  meaning  the  taking  of 
the  earth.  Nothing  else  is  important.  It  may  be  in  one  form 
or  another,  but  it  must  have  that  purpose,  or  it  won't  be  im- 
portant, because  you  can't  regulate  things  that  belong  to  other 
people  very  successfully;  you  have  got  to  get  it  yourselves. 
(Applause).  Now,  let's  see  what  you  have  got  to  do. 

In  the  first  place,  you  must  elect  a  congress,  and  the  con- 
gress does  not  take  its  seat  for  a  year  after  they  are  elected ; 
and  then  they  run  up  against  the  United  States  senate,  holding 
six  year  terms,  and  one-third  of  them  passing  away  each  two 

21 


years,  none  of  them  elected  upon  the  issue  upon  which  congress 
were  elected,  mostly  old  men  and  generally  rich  men — rich 
enough  to  get  the  job.  (Laughter).  Now  you  have  got  to  get 
the  law  through  congress  and  through  the  senate  both,  which 
is  well  nigh  impossible,  if  it  is  a  law  of  any  consequence.  And 
then  here  comes  a  president,  who  is  elected  by  the  people  for 
four  years,  and  he  must  sign  it,  and  if  congress  and  the  senate 
or  the  president  refuses,  then  you  can't  do  it.  Excepting  if 
the  president  refuses  then  you  have  got  to  get  two-thirds  of 
both  the  houses,  which  is  impossible  if  the  law  amounts  to  any- 
thing, and  then  you  have  only  begun.  If  you  should  happen 
to  get  all  these  three  at  once,  which  we  never  did  and  never 
will  on  anything  very  important  because  the  claws  are  all  cut 
out  of  any  bill  before  it  ever  gets  very  far, — then  you  have  only 
begun.  Then  here  is  this  document,  this  sacred  document 
which  came  down  from  Mount  Sinai  one  hundred  and  twenty- 
five  years  ago,  The  Constitution,  and  you  lay  down  the  law 
beside  the  Constitution  and  see  whether  it  is  unconstitutional 
or  not  and  of  course  you  could  not  tell.  You  would  not  know 
anything  about  it.  Congress  could  not  tell;  the  senate  could 
not  tell ;  the  president  coud  not  tell.  There  is  only  one  tribunal 
that  could  tell,  and  that  is  the  Supreme  Court.  And  whlie  the 
Constitution  fills  about  ten  pages,  the  interpretation  of  the 
Constitution  will  fill  a  hundred  volumes  or  more.  (Laughter). 
And  the  Constitution  is  not  what  is  written  in  ten  pages 
but  it  is  what  is  written  in  the  decisions  of  the  judges  covering 
over  a  hundred  years;  and  they  don't  always  agree,  at  that, 
which  makes  some  of  them  right.  If  they  all  agreed  probably 
none  of  them  would  be  right.  (Laughter). 

So  if  you  should  ever  succeed  in  getting  a  law  past  congress 
with  its  two  year  term,  and  the  senate  with  its  six,  and  the 
president  with  his  four,,  anyone  of  whom  may  block  it,  and 
will,  if  it  is  important,  then  you  have  got  to  pass  it  to  these 
wise  judges  who  are  not  elected  at  all  and  who  have  no  in- 

22 


terests  with  the  people  because  they  are  holding  their  office  for 
life  and  they  have  been  there  so  long  and  got  so  old  that  they 
don't  understand  any  of  the  new  qoestions  anyhow,  and  could 
not,  and  who  have  the  conservatism  of  age  anyway,  and  they 
have  got  to  decide  whether  that  law  is  constitutional  or  not, 
and  before  they  have  decided  it  and  before  it  has  run  the 
gauntlet  of  all  of  them,  even  if  they  decided  it  right  you  would 
not  need  the  law.  The  law  would  be  dead.  (Laughter).  But 
you  must  combine  on  all  these  four  things  before  you  can  ac- 
complish anything. 

And  that  is  not  all.  Then  you  must  decide  whether  the  law 
is  within  the  province  of  the  state  or  the  nation ;  whether  it  is 
state  business  or  whether  it  is  national  business ;  and  most  of 
our  laws  are  state  laws  and  when  we  get  back  to  the  state  we 
find  the  same  old  story.  Wonderful  wisdom !  Here  is  first  a 
constitution,  which  is  nothing  except  as  I  illustrated,  a  boy 
twenty-one  years  old  swears  he  won't  know  any  more  when  he 
is  fifty,  and  that  kind  of  a  boy  generally  does  not.  (Laughter). 
And  we  have  a  legislative  body  to  make  laws,  composed  of  a 
house  and  a  senate,  two  bodies,  one  not  being  wise  enough  to 
make  them  themselves ;  and  we  have  a  governor  with  a  veto, 
and  a  Supreme  Court  to  say  whether  the  law  is  constitutional 
or  not.  The  same  thing  in  the  state  and  the  same  thing  in  the 
nation.  Then  we  have  got  to  see  whether  it  is  in  the  province 
of  the  nation  or  the  state,  and  you  see  it  is  next  to  impossible 
to  ever  get  a  constitutional  law  that  amounts  to  anything,  and 
we  have  never  done  it. 

But,  they  say,  this  is  a  country  where  people  vote,  and  if 
you  don't  like  the  law,  why  change  it.  If  you  didn't  vote  there 
would  be  some  excuse  for  direct  action,  but  as  long  as  you  vote 
you  can  change  the  law.  (Applause).  The  trouble  is  you  can't 
change  it.  You  haven't  got  a  chance.  How  can  you  change 
one  of  these  laws  that  are  important  ?  How  can  you  appeal  to 
the  people,  first  of  all,  and  change  it  with  the  people?  And 

23 


next,  how  could  you  possibly  elect  a  congress  and  a  senate  and 
a  president  and  a  Supreme  Court  all  at  once,  that  ever  would 
make  any  substantial  change,  or  ever  did? 

"Well,"  they  say,  "if  the  Constitution  fetters  you  too 
much,  why,  change  the  Constitution.  The  Constitution  provides 
that  it  can  be  changed."  And  so  it  does;  but  how? 

You  can  change  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States.  You 
could  change  Mt.  Hood,  but  it  would  take  a  pile  of  shovels. 
(Laughter).  You  could  change  Mt.  Hood  a  good  deal  easier. 
It  could  be  done.  The  law  provides  that  if  you  pass  a  law 
through  congress  and  the  senate  and  it  is  signed  by  the  presi- 
dent, to  change  the  Constitution,  you  may  submit  it  to  the 
people  and  if  three-fourths  of  all  the  states  in  the  Union  con- 
sent to  it,  why  you  can  change  it.  What  do  you  think  of  that  ? 

Do  you  suppose  there  is  any  power  on  earth  that  ever  could 
get  a  law  through  congress  and  the  senate,  approved  by  the 
senate,  and  then  get  three-fourths  of  the  individual  states  in  the 
Union  to  approve  it?  You  and  your  children  and  your  chil- 
dren's children  would  die  while  you  are  doing  it. 

The  best  proof  of  that  is  the  fact  that  we  have  had  a  con- 
stitution for  one  hundred  and  twenty-five  years,  and  the  Lord 
knows  it  needs  patching.  It  needs  something  worse :  It  needs 
abolishing  worse  than  anything  else.  (Applause). 

If  anybody  does  want  to  tinker  with  voting  the  first  thing 
necessary  is  to  get  rid  of  the  constitution.  We  have  had  one 
for  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  with  a  provision  for 
changing  it.  It  has  needed  change.  It  needs  it  all  the  while, 
and  yet  it  has  never  been  changed  but  once.  They  passed 
several  amendments  all  in  a  heap.  What  were  those?  Those 
were  amendments  growing  out  of  the  Civil  War,  and  they 
didn't  permit  any  of  the  Southern  States  to  vote.  They  just 
ran  them  over  their  heads,  and  they  were  all  amendments  pro- 
tecting the  negroes  after  enfranchisement.  And  those  are  the 
only  amendments  we  have  had  in  one  hundred  and  twenty-five 

24 


years,  and  it  took  a  war  to  get  those — considerable  direct 
action. 

"Why,  if  a  body  of  ingenious  men  had  gotten  together  to 
make  the  frame  work  of  a  government  to  absolutely  take  from 
the  people  all  the  power  they  possibly  could,  they  could  not 
have  contrived  anything  more  mischievous  and  complete  than 
our  American  form  of  government.  (Applause). 

Russia  is  easy  and  simple  compared  with  this.  If  you  did 
happen  to  get  a  progressive,  kindly,  sympathetic,  humane 
Czar,  which  you  probably  won't,  but  if  you  did  you  could 
change  all  the  laws  of  Russia  and  you  could  change  them  right 
away  and  get  something.  But  if  you  got  the  wisest  and  kindest 
and  most  sympathetic  man  on  earth  at  the  head  of  our  govern- 
ment he  could  not  do  anything;  or  if  you  filled  congress  with 
them  they  could  not  do  anything,  or  the  senate  they  could  not, 
and  the  Supreme  Court  could  not.  You  would  have  to  fill  them 
all  at  once,  and  then  they  would  have  to  override  all  the  pre- 
cedents of  a  hundred  and  twenty-five  years  to  accomplish  it. 

The  English  Government  is  simplicity  itself  compared  to  it. 
As  compared  with  ours  it  is  as  direct  as  a  convention  of  the 
I.  W.  W.  (Applause).  The  English  people  elect  a  Parliament 
and  when  some  demand  comes  up  from  the  country  for  dif- 
ferent legislation  which  reaches  Parliament  and  is  strong 
enough  to  demand  a  division  in  Parliament  and  the  old  majority 
fails,  Parliament  is  dissolved  at  once,  and  you  go  right  straight 
back  to  the  people  and  elect  a  new  Parliament  upon  that  issue 
and  they  go  at  once  to  Parliament  and  pass  a  law,  and  there  is 
no  power  on  earth  that  can  stop  them.  The  king  hasn't  any 
more  to  say  about  the  laws  of  England,  nor  any  more  power 
than  a  floor  manager  of  a  charity  ball  would  have  to  say  about 
it.  He  is  just  an  ornament,  and  not  much  of  an  ornament  at 
that.  (Applause).  The  House  of  Lords  is  comparatively  help- 
less, and  they  never  had  any  constitution ;  there  never  was  any 
power  in  England  to  set  aside  any  law  that  the  people  made. 

25 


It  was  the  law,  plain  and  direct  and  simple,  and  you  might  get 
somewhere  with  it.  But  we  have  built  up  a  machine  that 
destroys  every  person  who  undertakes  to  touch  it.  I  don't 
know  how  you  are  ever  going  to  remedy  it.  Nothing  short  of 
a  political  revolution,  which  would  be  about  as  complete  as  the 
Deluge,  could  ever  change  our  laws  under  our  present  system 
(applause)  in  any  important  particular. 

But  while  anybody  is  voting  they  had  better  vote  the  right 
way  if  they  can  find  it  out.  If  they  can't  it  is  just  as  well  not  to 
vote.  They  had  better  vote  for  some  workingman's  candidate 
and  be  counted  as  long  as  you  are  doing  it.  (Applause).  Still 
any  benefit  that  must  come  anywhere  in  the  near  future  must 
come  some  other  way.  Workingmen  have  not  raised  their  wages 
by  it;  they  haven't  shortened  their  hours  of  toil  by  it;  they 
haven't  improved  the  conditions  of  life  by  it;  it  has  all  been 
done  in  some  other  way.  All  of  this  has  been  accomplished  by 
trades-unionism,  by  organization.  If  you  can  organize  work- 
ingmen  sufficiently  so  that  they  may  make  their  demands 
strong  strong  enough  you  can  accomplish  something  in  all  of 
these  directions.  (Applause).  But  our  political  institutions 
are  such  that  before  you  could  get  anything  like  a  political 
revolution  you  need  an  industrial  revolution.  (Applause). 

And  then  we  come  to  face  some  of  the  problems  of  today, 
and  I  want  to  speak  a  little  bit  about  that.  I  have  talked  to 
you  about  as  long  as  I  ought  to  tonight,  but  I  want  to  say 
something  about  some  matters  that  perhaps  are  closer  home 
than  those. 

We  find  the  American  workingman  bound  by  the  law,  as 
I  have  said, — everything  taken  from  him.  He  can't  do  any- 
thing by  voting.  The  courts  are  almost  always  against  him, 
for  the  simple  reason  that  courts  are  made  from  lawyers,  gen- 
erally prominent  lawyers  and  well  known  lawyers.  In  almost 
every  instance  these  lawyers  have  been  corporation  lawyers. 
Their  instincts  are  that  way.  Their  beliefs  are  that  wray,  and 

26 


their  training  and  heredity  are  that  way;  and  they  are  not 
with  the  poor. 

In  order"  to  be  a  lawyer  you  must  spend  considerable  time, 
if  not  studying,  at  least  you  must  spend  it  not  working.  You 
can't  work  while  you  are  becoming  a  lawyer,  and  you  won't 
work  afterwards.  (Laughter).  It  takes  eight  or  ten  years' 
schooling  at  least.  That  is  one  reason  why  a  lawyer  says  he 
should  have  big  fees,  it  takes  him  so  long  to  learn  the  trade. 
That  is,  the  poor  people  support  a  lawyer  so  long  while  he  is 
preparing  that  they  ought  to  support  him  better  while  he  is 
practicing  (laughter)  ;  because  a  fellow  studying  to!  be  a 
lawyer,  or  a  doctor,  or  a  minister — I  don't  know  what  they 
study  to  be  a  minister,  but  I  suppose  they  do  (laughter) — has 
got  to  be  living  while  he  is  studying  and  somebody  must  take 
care  of  him ;  to  take  care  of  him  while  he  is  learning — after 
he  gets  it  learned  he  takes  care  of  himself. 

So  the  judges  are  not  on  your  side.  They  don't  look  at 
things  the  way  you  do.  They  are  trained  differently.  If  they 
were  picked  out  of  your  trade  councils  they  would  look  at 
them  differently  and  they  could  decide  cases  differently. 
Everything  is  in  habit,  and  the  environment  and  the  training, 
and  they  are  all  the  time  fashioning  the  law  against  you. 

Then  what?  Workingmen  find  themselves  hedged  about 
wherever  they  turn.  They  can't  employ  themselves.  Some- 
body has  got  the  earth.  They  can't  mine  ore;  somebody  owns 
it.  They  can't  get  the  steel  to  do  the  work  with  themselves; 
they  have  got  to  buy  it  of  somebody.  They  can't  do  the  work 
except  for  wages;  the  employer  does  it  and  the  employer  in- 
sists upon  open  competition  in  labor  and  workingmen  are  con- 
stantly fighting  each  other. 

Everybody  admits  that  the  systems  must  change,  that  the 
laws  must  change.  They  can't  change  them  by  political  action, 
and  the  injustice  goes  on,  and  on,  and  on. 

They  find  children  taken  from  school  and  put  in  factories 

27 


and  mills;  their  children,  not  the  children  of. the  rich  but  the 
children  of  the  poor.  The  rich  love  their  children  so  much 
that  they  don't  put  them  in  factories  and  mills.'  Only  the 
children  of  the  poor  are  put  in  factories  and  mills,  which  shows 
that  mother  love  is  not  the  same  with  poor  people  as  it  is  with 
rich  people.  Still  the  poor  people  have  all  the  children  any- 
way, so  there  are  enough.  (Laughter).  They  are  good  to  the 
rich  and  they  have  the  chidren  for  them. 

They  find  that  the  life  of  a  poor  man  is  only  about  two- 
thirds  as  long  as  that  of  a  rich  man.  A  man  dies  because  he 
is  poor.  A  lawyer,  or  preacher  or  a  doctor  can  take  care  of 
himself;  but  the  workingman  dies  because  he  is  poor.  Lots 
of  gray-headed  lawyers  and  preachers  and  bankers  and  doc- 
tors, but  there  are  not  so  very  many  gray-haired  working- 
men.  That  is  lucky  for  them,  too,  because  they  would  have  to 
go  to  the  poor  house.  (Laughter).  Maybe  they  will  get  old 
age  pensions  sometimes.  (Applause).  It  is  always  safe  and 
economical  to  give  workingmen  old  age  pensions,  because  they 
never  reach  old  age.  They  find  themselves  ground  up  by  all 
kinds  of  machinery,  ground  to  death  under  car  wheels,  sawed 
to  pieces  in  factories  and  mills,  falling  from  ten  and  twelve 
story  buildings,  picked  up  oe  the  ground  just  one  big  spatter 
of  blood  and  bones.  They  know  these  conditions  are  wrong 
and  they  can't  change  them,  and  the  people  who  have  control 
of  it  are  squeezing  them  tighter  and  and  tighter  all  the  time 
and  they  don't  know  which  way  to  turn.  And  which  way  do 
they  turn?  They  try  voting.  They  don't  accomplish  it.  They 
try  organization,  and  that  is  hard.  They  try  direct  action,  and 
that  is  hard,  too.  You  wonder  that  they  try  it. 

Now,  a  great  many  people  condemned  the  McNamaras.  A 
great  many  working  people  condemned  them.  I  don't  say 
that  the  working  people  ever  need  to  resort  to  force,  or  ever 
should  resort  to  force,  but  it  is  not  for  me  to  condemn  anybody 
who  believes  they  should.  (Applause). 


I  know  that  the  progress  of  the  human  race  is  one  long 
bloody  story  of  force  and  violence  (applause)  ;  and  from  the 
time  man  got  up  on  his  hind  legs  and  looked  the  world  in  the 
face  he  has  been  fighting,  and  fighting,  and  fighting  for  all 
the  liberty  and  the  opportunity  that  he  has  had.  I  think  the 
time  will  come  when  he  can  stop.  Perhaps  it  has  come.  And 
no  one  hates  cruelty  and  force  and  violence  more  than  I  hate 
it.  But  don't  let  them  ever  tell  you  that  all  the  force  has 
been  on  our  side.  (Loud  applause).  It  never  has  been;  most 
all  of  it  has  been  with  them.  (Applause).  They  are  the  ones 
who  have  the  force,  who  have  the  power. 

Why  are  these  standing  armies  and  navies;  and,  more  than 
that,  the  militia  building  their  armories  in  every  great  city  in 
the  United  States?  Are  they  there  for  a  foreign  foe  or  are  they 
there  to  shoot  strikers  and  workingmen  when  the  time  shall 
come?  (Loud  applause).  Are  they  there  to  protect  the  people 
from  China  and  Japan  and  England,  or  are  they  there  to 
protect  property  against  the  poor?  (Loud  and  prolonged  ap- 
plause). 

What  is  a  lockout  in  a  factory  or  mill  when  they  call  it 
famine  and  want  and  hunger  and  cold,  to  do  their  work?  Is 
that  force,  or  is  it  peace  and  quietness  and  gentleness,  and  the 
Golden  Rule? 

What  are  the  policemen,  what  are  the  officers  of  the  law, 
what  is  the  machinery  of  government  directed  against  the 
workingmen,  holding  all  the  resources  of  the  earth  in  the 
power  of  a  few  and  compelling  the  money  to  go  to  those  few 
for  the  means  of  life?  Isn't  this  force? 

What  is  the  blacklist?  Is  it  anything  but  force  that  drives 
children  into  the  factories,  that  drives  women  into  factories, 
and  compels  men  to  work  with  defective  machinery  for  long 
hours  and  poor  wages?  Is  it  anything  but  the  force  of  strva- 
tion  and  want  that  has  always  been  used  by  the  owners  of  the 
earth  to  make  the  poor  do  their  bidding  and  their  will? 

29 


The  force  is  there.  It  is  not  with  the  weak.  The  weak 
have  never  had  the  strength  or  the  opportunity  to  use  the 
force.  And  when  here  and  there  some  man  like  the  McNamaras 
and  others — I  don 't  need  to  mention  them  alone,  excepting  that 
I  want  to  live  to  see  the  day  that  justice  will  be  done  to  them 
(loud  applause) — here  and  there  when  they  reach  out  blindly 
to  meet  force  with  force,  call  it  blind  if  you  will,  call  it  wrong 
if  you  will;  I  have  never  counseled  it  or  advised  it,  perhaps 
because  I  am  not  brave  enough ;  it  is  not  for  me  to  say ;  but 
call  it  blind,  call  it  mistaken,  call  it  what  you  will ;  but  the  fact 
will  ever  remain  that  men  who  do  it  never  do  it  for  their  own 
mean  personal  ends  but  because  they  love  their  fellowmen. 
(Loud  applause).  And  long  ago  it  was  written  down  that 
"Greater  love  hath  no  man  than  this,  that  he  who  would  give 
his  life  for  his  friend."  Some  day,  I  say,  it  will  be  understood, 
and  some  day  the  world  will  understand  that  they  and  Wood 
who  was  indicted  from  the  other  side  for  an  attempt  to  charge 
something  to  labor  that  labor  was  not  guilty  of,  and  all  of 
these  other  indictments  growing  out  of  the  same  acts,  that  all 
of  these  acts  were  not  individual  acts  at  all,  but  they  were  a 
part  of  a  great  industrial  tragedy  of  a  great  evolution  of  society ; 
that  they  are  what  are  called  social  crimes  or  social  acts  for 
which  these  men  were  responsible  in  no  degree.  They  were  a 
part  of  a  machine;  they  were  risking  their  lives;  a  part  of 
a  system;  and,  do  what  you  will,  others  will  be  ground  out  of 
it  forever  and  forever,  until  the  system  shall  change  and  until 
there  will  be  some  equity  and  justice  in  the  world.  (Loud 
applause). 

The  world  is  changing,  and  every  person  is  doing  his  part 
in  his  own  way.  It  is  not  for  you  to  criticize  me  or  for  me  to 
criticize  you,  but  to  judge  men  by  their  motives  and  to  judge 
them  by  the  side  they  are  on.  Labor  must  stand  for  its  own 
men.  (Loud  applause).  It  must  stand  even  for  its  own  mis- 
takes, and  its  own  crimes  if  it  is  guilty  of  them.  (Applause). 

30 


There  is  one  question,  and  only  one,  to  ask  concerning  a  man 
or  concerning  an  act:  f'Was  he  on  my  side?"  (Applause). 
You  may  counsel  him  to  do  differently;  yes.  You  may  teach 
him  moderation,  and  believe  in  it;  and  all  of  us  want  to  see 
peace  and  justice  and  harmony  come  out  of  all  of  these  con- 
tending forces,  as  it  one  day  will  come;  you  may  teach  it  and 
you  may  believe  it,  but  the  man  who  lets  a  thought  loose  in  the 
universe  can  never  tell  what  the  results  of  that  thought  may  be. 
It  may  bear  fruit  in  a  thousand  ways  of  which  we  never  dream ; 
but  even  though  it  does  and  it  must  the  thought  must  go 
forth  to  do  its  work  and  to  change  the  face  of  the  earth.  The 
highest  and  the  holiest  and  the  best  thought  may  bring  on  strife 
and  war.  And  John  Brown,  a  devoted  man  who  believed  in  the 
liberty  of  the  slaves,  took  his  gun  in  his  hand  and  went  to 
Virginia  and  raised  his  hand  in  rebellion  against  the  country. 
He  was  tried  and  convicted  and  hanged  for  murder,  and  he  was 
guilty  of  murder  under  the  laws  of  man,  but  under  the  laws 
of  God  he  was  a  hero.  The  laws  of  justice  and  righteousness 
look  not  to  the  act  but  they  look  at  the  motive  that  moved  the 
brain.  Were  they  fighting  on  our  side?  Were  they  fighting 
for  justice  and  humanity  and  the  weak  and  the  poor  and  the 
oppressed,  as  they  saw  it?  If  so,  whoever  they  are  and  what- 
ever, they  demand  our  sympathy  and  our  support.  (Applause). 
John  Brown  by  his  act  of  heroism  plunged  the  United  States 
into  a  civil  war  costing  hundreds  of  thousands  of  lives,  and 
billions  of  property.  But  he  was  not  responsible  for  the 
thought.  It  came  in  the  evolution  of  time.  And  so  don't  think 
that  any  one  man  is  responsible  for  any  one  great  event  in  this 
world.  The  earth  is  moving,  the  universe  is  working,  all  the 
laws  of  creation  are  working  toward  justice,  toward  a  better 
humanity,  toward  a  higher  ideal,  toward  a  time  when 
men  will  be  brothers  the  world  over.  (Applause).  The  evolu- 
tion will  not  all  be  peaceful.  It  can't  be.  There  will  be  con- 
flict and  blood  shed;  there  will  be  prisons,  there  will  be  jails, 

31 


but  through  it  all  this  same  humanity  that  has  come  onward 
and  upward  from  the  brute  below  us,  onward  and  upward  1«» 
where  we  are  today,  this  same  humanity  will  be  growing  in 
wisdom  and  strength  and  righteousness,  and  the  good  and 
the  evil,  the  peace  and  the  charity,  the  violence  and  all,  will 
be  combined  to  make  "man  better  and  make  the  world  jusit-r 
and  fairer  than  it  has  ever  been  before.  (Loud  applaune). 

(At  the  conclusion  of  the  address  of  Mr.  Darrow  at  the 
suggestion  of  a  member  of  the  audience  three  lusty  cheers  wnv 
given  for  the  speaker) . 


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